Cat and Mouse
by Shikamaru123456789
Summary: Percy, Annabeth, and another go off to Maine to search for a child who is extremely powerful. Soon, a Manticore attacks, but it has the Nemean lion's skin. What is happening in this world, and what is Kronos planning?


I stared at myself in the mirror. Truth be told, I hardly recognized myself. I wore black skinny jeans with a purple-and-black Escape the Fate shirt. Grey converses were on my feet, and my dark brown hair was brushed over my left eye. A story was told in my abyssal-like black eyes. When I was about two, I was adopted by a couple who already had a daughter by the name of Isabella. They were Jasper and Kate Burns, and I was soon a Burn.

Ten years passed by, and even though I looked nothing like Isabella – with her jet-black hair and deep, grey eyes – I fit in well enough. My mom and dad – when I turned five, I accepted them as such – picked me up from school, and then we started to drive to pick up Isabella. Dad cursed under his breath, and turned to Mom, and then me.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out an orb. It was sparkling black, and smoke swirled around inside it. "Take it," he told me, parking the car. "Do _not_ break it unless you truly need to. It's really power–"

And then the car was sent flying. I grabbed the orb from his hand and slipped it into my pocket. Water careened around the car, and I saw a glimpse of a lion before blacking out. In the newspapers, it read that my parents had died, so Isabella and I were sent to an orphanage. There, I guarded her with my life even though she was my age. I knew what those places were like – hell.

Months passed by, and I was kicked out of nearly every school I went to. In truth, I went to a different school each month. And then I was adopted without my knowledge. I told Casey and Lori – my new parents – about my sister, but when they called back to try and adopt her, she was already adopted. I could only imagine how much she hated me for leaving her all alone in that hellhole to be adopted by some unknowing family.

As I stared into my eyes, I thought about all of that. I took the orb that Jasper had given me from my dresser and stared at it longingly. What was so "powerful" about it? Absentmindedly, I put it on my windowsill and took a pen, slipping it into my pocket. "Jared!" Lori called up to me. Casey was already on the road to his morning training. The three of us lived on Fort Lucas Army Base in Maine, and it was a pretty quiet neighborhood.

That day, it was the first day of school. The summer had passed since I was adopted by Jasper and Lori, and I was planning to stay in the same school the whole year. It was a lengthy order, but I wanted to make it happened. My foster parents didn't know about my horrible school records or my ADHD or my dyslexia, and I was hoping it would stay that way.

"Jared, c'mon, you're going to be late for school!" she yelled.

I grabbed my backpack and raced down the stairs. "Thanks, bye," I told her, grabbing some toast and walking out the door. The school was only a two blocks away, so I was able to get there in a minute. Absentmindedly, I chose a line that seemed to be kids my own age – thirteen. I could easily make out the different groups of kids.

By the door to the school were the "cool" kids that consisted of four guys and three girls. The nerds conversed about something or other by the flagpole, while the scene kids sat quietly on the grass. I felt like I belonged with them for a second, and then I noticed another group – the ones with no friends. I immediately walked over to them.

One of them – a girl with blonde hair and grey eyes – was reading a book that read "Iliad." I had heard of it before, and then I noticed something strange: I was able to read it. A chill shimmied its way down my spine as I tried to read other things to no prevail. The bell rang through the schoolyard, and teachers walked out, directing the kids where to go.

A boy with black hair and green eyes sneaked up behind and her hugged her. She jumped and cursed in some language I hardly understood, but I did understand it. They both laughed furiously, and I felt a chasm in my soul, remembering my best friend back in New Jersey. With a sigh, I looked away from them and focused on some scattering deer.

I hopped from one foot to the other, nervous energy coursing through my veins. Finally, the homeroom that I was in was called, and I stepped forward, and so did the two friends. "So how long to we have to be here?" asked the boy.

The girl looked at him with dark eyes, and then muttered, "As long as we have to until we find whoever Grover is talking about, Seaweed Head."

He nodded and soon our line walked into the school. The smell of paint washed through my nostrils when we walked through the halls, which were plain beige, like any other school. We got into the classroom and we were ordered to take a seat wherever we liked. Instead of desks – like every other classroom we passed – this homeroom had tables.

I sat down at the first table I saw, and so did Seaweed Brain and the blond. A minute or two passed as the two of them passed silent jokes, and then a girl sat down next to me. I didn't say anything, and neither did she, but I noticed a quick glance between the three of them and hostile eyes from the black-haired boy and the blond. _Seaweed Brain _

Another bell rang through the school, and the teacher – Mrs. Sacco – demanded silence. She was a thin, tall woman with blond hair that was graying. Even so, you could see the sparkle in her eyes that made her young.

The teacher called out names, and each person raised their hand. "Jared Grizi… bon-zoo?" questioned the teacher, looking around the class. A few kids laughed freely, and I raised my hand.

"Jared Grizibononszu. Grizi-bon-non-zoo," I repeated, more slowly. I let a smirk creep upon my face, and she apologized, moving on.

"Cole Hasenburg?" Seaweed Brain raised his hand and then dropped it when the teacher nodded. "Sherry Garisburg?" The blond nodded and raised her hand. She called out a few other names, and then the girl next to me raised her hand when the teacher asked for "Lilly Illington."

As the teacher called out a few other names, Seaweed Brain turned to Barbie. "You're a _Jew?" _he asked with a laugh.

"Friends and alibis," she said without looking at him, but I could see her repressing a smile. "Did you know that my grandfather died in the Holocaust? Hmm, he fell off a guard tower." They both laughed quietly, and I tried my best to hold back a laugh. It would be awkward to laugh at their jokes.

The teacher handed out note cards that held locker combinations and locker numbers on them. She sent out a few people at a time, and soon my table went out. We opened, closed, and then opened our lockers. We stuck our backpacks in them, and I looked noticed that Barbie was playing around with the inside of her locker.

Hours went by as we sat in homeroom. A lot of people were making a lot of noise, but my table stayed generally quiet. That girl, Lilly, would give me a sideways glance once in a while, and I felt like I knew her. Still, it was hard to put my finger on it, so I left it alone. Once in a while, Barbie and Seaweed Brain would crack a joke, but that was generally the extent of conversation.

At some point, Mrs. Sacco handed out our schedules, and I looked over mine. "May I see yours?" asked Barbie. I looked up at her from behind the paper and passed it to her. She looked from her paper, to Seaweed Brain's paper, to my paper, and finally Lilly's paper. She nodded as if she constructed some kind of master plan and handed us our papers back.

At one point, I got up to go to the bathroom. When I got back, the three of them were talking in a real serious tone. All I heard was, "… when some of Kronos's minions attack? Huh? What if it's a half-blood that attacks?"

Barbie was stopped short and started turned bright red like a tomato. I didn't bother to ask what they were talking about. Probably some game online that they are probably addicted to. Soon, the teacher told us that we were going to go to first period at the end of the day for the next two days. Supposedly, they had to check to make sure that, and I quote, "… there are no illegal, masochistic terrorists that are planning to bomb the army base or any illegal immigrants that happen to be in need of deportation."

Soon, the announcement was made over the loud speaker that we needed to go to first period. I noticed that the three kids from my table were also going to my class – which was Spanish –, and decided to follow them. When I got in, I took and seat and looked around the room. Random sayings in Spanish were spread out across the room, and we had desks.

"Hola, classé. Soy Senora Clifford," she told us, and I was smart enough to know that she said something about welcoming us to class, and telling us that her name was Ms. Clifford. _Win._ "We are going to play a game in class today. We are going to learn everyone's names."

She soon had us saying everyone's names. When it came to me, I stuttered. "Uh… soy Jared Bu-…." _What was their last name? _I thought to myself. And then a better question: _What is my last name? _"Jared. Soy… Jared."

Senora Clifford accepted the answer and then moved onto Seaweed Brains, then Lilly, and then Barbie. By the end of the period – forty-five minutes – we were supposed to know everyone's names. Truth be told, I only knew three, and two of them were nicknames.

"So how was school?" Casey asked me.

Casey had short, blond hair and was still in his fatigues. He was scrawny for someone in the army, I have to say, but I wasn't one to judge. When people see me, they think I'm anorexic. They say that mostly at night, when I would go out with my friends. It made been a while since I had friends that I could really count on.

"Bien," I told him with a smirk.

"Ha-ha, we got a little wise-guy here, thinking he's Spanish," Lori laughed. She had been taught Spanish by her parents, and was giving me lessons now and then. Still, it was so hard to pay attention and remember the Spanish verbs and stuff and how to pronounce them. She had bright, red hair that flowed across her back all wavy.

I gave her a smirk before sauntering off to the sink with the three of our plates and cups. I washed the dishes, and then headed up to my room. I took the orb out of my pocket, and stared at it. It was about the size of a marble, pitch-black, with black smoke spinning around in it. And then I gasped, almost dropping it. I had most definitely put the orb on my windowsill, and then it was in my pocket.

_How?_

Absentmindedly, I put the orb on my windowsill _again, _and then plopped down on my bed, still in my jeans. Somehow I fell asleep in only a matter of minutes. I remember my door opening, and Lori putting the blankets over me, but beside that, nothing… except for the dream. It haunted me for days.

"_My Lady, what are you going to do about the boy?" asked a girl. She wore a black and grey cloak, and it was hard to focus on her in the darkness._

"_He is Apollo's child, Zo__ë."_

_The girl that said that looked about ten, but her voice seemed so wise. She wore the same attire as the other girl, but her hood was down, her hair was in a bun, and she wore a scowl on her face. The two of them seemed to be sitting in a tent, but the floor was only dirt. Animals surrounded the ten-year-old, leaning against her as she pet them gingerly._

"_But My Lady…," __Zo__ë muttered quietly, looking around as if someone was watching. "You truly believe Lord Apollo will claim him?"_

"_Will you, brother?"_

_Zo__ë stood up and turned, bowing at the waist to a guy who seemed to be about sixteen. He wore an American Eagle t-shirt, skinny jeans, converses, shaggy red hair, and a goofy smile. No one seemed to notice me as the dream shifted into darkness. When I awoke, I was in a cold sweat; my covers were thrown in every direction._

"Jared, time for school," Lori told me, entering my room.

In the middle of the night, I had put my sheets in the fridge for about ten minutes to dry them. I also changed into a t-shirt and shorts, so within a few seconds, I was back into skinny jeans and a t-shirt with smoke patterns on it. Sure enough, when I felt into my pocket, the orb was there. I took it out and stared at it, wanting to know what it truly was. But I wasn't breaking my promise right then.

I took some toast and thanked Lori before taking the three minute walk to school. Snow crunched under my feet as I neared the school. I got in line, waiting for the bell to ring. To my surprise, Seaweed Brain and Barbie sat down next to me. "So how was your first day?" Barbie asked me.

I hesitated before answering her, but I only said one word – good. "How about you, Seaweed Brain?" I asked him with a laugh.

Both of them stiffened and glared at me. "How much did you hear?" It wasn't a question to answer, it was an order.

"Not much," I answered truthfully, "just something about _Kronos. _Isn't he some Greek Titan or something like that?"

"Uh, yeah," Barbie muttered. The bell rang, and the two of them seemed grateful to leave me, rushing past me. I gave myself a short laugh before walking down the hall to get to homeroom. When I looked behind me, the two of them were staring at each other, muttering something as people passed by them.

_Boom!_

I gasped and looked around. Barbie grabbed Seaweed Brain and raced down the hall to me. "Get in the class," he told me urgently, pushing me in and shutting the door. Mrs. Sacco stared at me, and then walked over to the door, opening it again. I peered out of the door and almost cursed in front of the teacher. I backed away from the door, letting my backpack fall to the ground.

"Jared!" Barbie called to me. She held a dagger in her hand, but no one seemed to care; they just went about their business. "You know Suicide Cliff?"

Who didn't? Even though I was new, I knew Suicide Cliff was where some guy jumped from, dying from the jagged rocks that the ocean careened against. "Go there!" she yelled. People stared at her ridiculously, and I was one of them. She ran over to me and grabbed me by the arm. Mrs. Sacco was about to scold her, but the two of us were already gone.

"Look, I can't explain everything to you here, and I'm taking a huge risk," she told me nervously, letting go of my arm and starting to run. She stopped a few feet from me and gestured for me to follow her, but I stayed put. She ran back to me and put the dagger made of some kind of bronze to my neck. "Follow or I kill you."

What other sensible thing could I have done rather than run by her side? "I may have the wrong person," she continued, "but I don't care. In the school is a monster. Percy –"

"Percy?" I asked her curiously.

"Ugh!" she cried out in frustration. "My name is really Annabeth, the boy is Percy, and the other girl is Becca. She wasn't supposed to come along, but she did anyway since she thought she was part of the Great Prophecy."

"Great Prophecy?"

"Shut up!" she yelled at me, not breaking stride. "No more questions. Anyway, there's a monster in there." I almost asked her if she was psychotic, but then I remembered the dagger in her hand and decided not to risk my luck. I reached into my own pocket and pulled out the marble that my dad had given me. As I ran, I stared into it, wondering what secrets it held.

I decided to take a risk.

I stopped running and clasped my hand about it. Barbie turned around and cursed in some language – Greek? –, and both of us stared, petrified, and what was happening to my right hand. Black smoke was emitted from the marble and the tendrils circled around my hand. The smoke was darker than night, and then it started to take form.

It wrapped around each of the points between my fingers, creating a fingerless glove. I turned my hand over and saw the marble holding its shape in the glove, creating a type of holder. It wrapped all the way up my arm, making it look like I had black tattoos.

My arm then became ridiculously cold as the darkness started to set in. I cursed and shook my arm around, but that just made it worse. Soon, I had no feeling in my arm at all. In pure horror, Annabeth watched as the tattoos crept down my shirt, onto my face, my other arm, and soon all across my body. The coldness spread just as quickly.

My body had enough.

I passed out.

_I stared into the darkness, meeting it head on. The moon shone above me at its fullest, but it gave me no comfort at all. I looked at the horizon and saw the sun start to creep up. It was going ten times faster than normal, and soon it was at the same level as the moon. I knew that this was totally impossible, but I didn't really care._

_ The sun gave no light to that dark world, but the two celestial bodies continued to go back and forth, the moon behind the sun or the sun behind the moon. I watched as the two of the bodies fought for a long time, but I couldn't figure out how long. There seemed to be no measure of time in the dark abyssal wasteland. _

_ The scene then changed to something different. Two people were in an oval-shaped arena, people cheering in the stands. I stared wordlessly as I saw the black tattoos along both of their right arms. They muttered something in a language I understood as Greek, and somehow I had heard them through all the noise. They had both said in unison, "Holy Goddess of the Moon, please grant thy power from above."_

_ Thunder roared from above, and the black tattoos started to spread across their bodies. Unlike myself, they didn't seem to feel anything bad from it. If anything, they seemed to feel more powerful. They backed up from each other, and one of them made the first move._

_ Lightning blasted from the one guy's hand, blasting from each of his five fingertips. The other guy dodged this with ease, slamming his hand in the earth of the arena. The earth erupted in a straight line, right at the guy. He rolled to the right, landing on one knee. He had a strained face as he raised both his hands slowly from the ground. A rumbling filled the arena as water started to pour out of the line._

_ It rose from the ground, defying all laws of gravity, and he used both of his arms to direct the water where to go. He blocked a few of the other guy's fire and lightning attacks, and then made the water go all the way into the air. It separated into a million small ice needles, surrounding the other guy. The predator clamped both of his hands shut with a sinister smile, and the needles shot into the guy's body._

_ A horrifying scream of agony rang through the air, cut short by its sudden death. I stared at the scene with wide eyes, waiting for him to rise from his bloody form and shake hands with the other guy. _

"_Good game," I would think one of them would say, but that didn't happen. Nothing happened except blackness entering my image._

My eyes shot open, and I struggled to get free from the iron grip, and finally I did, falling onto the grass. Seaweed Brain cursed and picked me up again, but I pushed against him. "Where are you taking me?" I asked him in a shaky voice.

"Camp Half-blood," he answered with honest eyes. "You're a son of a goddess or god, but we aren't sure. We won't be sure until either of which claims you."

I laughed unsteadily, getting up. "Yeah, and I'm famous." At least I hadn't lost my sarcastic touch in La, La Land.

"What is that thing you have?" Barbie asked me, ignoring my remark.

"I don't know," I told her sternly. "My dad had given it to me before a _lion _attacked and killed him and my mother."

"A lion?" the three of them asked in unison. I nodded, wanting to make another remark, but when I looked at my arm, I almost collapsed again. The tattoos were still there. They were dimmer, but they were most definitely there.

"_ROAR!" _some kind of monster yelled in the distance. I looked to where the noise came from and saw the silhouette of a creature that would definitely be our demise. Barbie pulled the dagger from her sleeve and a Yankee's baseball hat from her pocket and put it on. She disappeared into the air, but the other two didn't seem the least bit afflicted by this.

Seaweed Brain pulled a pen from his pocket and then uncapped it. A three-foot long sword emitted from the pen, sparkling bronze shining in the sun. Becca then pulled her belt from her waist and it immediately transformed into a sword that crackled in the sun. Instead of being made from bronze like the other two weapons, this was pitch-black, tendrils of darkness extending and contrasting like snakes. Shadows bended around her, and soon she disappeared also. Seaweed Brain and I were the only ones left.

"Do you know how to use that?" he asked me. He seemed like he could take on the world – he didn't have a fear in the world.

"Kind of," I answered, and then pursed my lips.

"It's time to learn how to fight."

I stared at him ridiculously. "Uh…," I muttered, and then he ran at the silhouette that started to become clearer as it got closer. It had strange kind of spikes on its back, and I almost screamed. "Goddess of the Moon, please grant thy power from above," I whispered awkwardly.

Tendrils of darkness extended from my arms throughout my whole body as thunder roared above. This time, I felt no coldness. Instead, I felt more powerful than I had in a long time. I thought about the dream that I had, hoping that I would remember everything that I had to do. I extended my arm, my fingertips pointed at the two silhouettes that now seemed to be engaged in combat.

_Lightning, _I thought to myself. I felt a feeling of energy bolt through my fingers, and then coldness spread through my fingers. I cursed, thinking that I would pass out, but it immediately went away when I lost my concentration. _Lightning… lightning… lightning…, _my mantra was, and the coldness returned, but I ignored it.

The air around my fingers rippled, and then the coldness left me as I heard the air _rip_. Streaks of lightning blazed through the air, straight at the shadows. Instead of reaching all the way to them, it died out halfway there. Without a second thought, I started to run at the two shadows. Within only a few minutes, I arrived at the scene, panting. The energy that I used to shoot that lightning tired me.

I almost passed out… again.

In front of me, Seaweed Brain and two invisible people were fighting a _monster. _It had the face of a human, but it was standing on all-fours. It had golden skin that sparkled in the sun, and a tail that wagged back and forth playfully, waiting for the next attack. At the end of the tail was a spike, and running all across its golden-furred back were spikes.

_Lightning!_

It bolted from my fingertips, and a great wave of nausea – way more than before – washed through me. It hit the lion head-on, but it only shook lightly, as if it hadn't done anything. "This is a Manticore," Seaweed Brain muttered, dodging a spike that shot from its tail. As soon as it was shot, another one took its place. "Somehow, it got the skin of a Nemean Lion and some… dinosaur spikes."

I slammed my hand into the earth like the guy in my dream. _Abyss… _I thought, and the earth started to shake. A line shot out from my fist, aimed at the monster. Another wave of nausea flashed through me, and I fell to the ground. I cursed to myself as the lion dodged and shot a spike at my side, stabbing me. Pain emitted from my side, and I curled up, choking.

And then I passed out… again.


End file.
